A Player Ranking System That Could Work

I saw this mentioned briefly in another thread that I cant for the life of me remember where I saw it, but I thought that the idea has loads of potential as a player based rating system that would actually work, instead of being completely broken / open to tonnes of abuse.

Most currently proposed Player rating systems work around the idea that if you rank terrible players as terrible, or give them horrible reviews or whatever, that they eventually find themselves completely unable to get groups or whatever. These can be easily gamed however, by deliberately giving "nice" players terrible rankings in an effort to grief them.

Instead, the way it should work is sort of like a combination of the /ignore, /friend system and the LFR / LFD matchmaking system. The co-responding connections the system makes should not be bad for the ranked player, but instead be good for the player doing the ranking.

when you /ignore someone, you never see them again. The system never groups you with them again. The end.
when you /friend someone, those are the first people you generally look to for groups or interaction online.

So why not design a ranking system where it weights your possible group composition based on positive feedback you have given other players?
You group with someone. When the group is done, you rank them.
- If you rank them favourbaly, then then next time the two of you are in the Dungeon Queue system at the same time, there is an increased chance the system puts you together for a group.
- If you rank them unfavourably, the opposite occurs.

If the system was aggregate based on accounts (not characters), you would eventually NEVER be grouped with people who you didnt like, even if they try to hide behind alts, while you would have greatly increased chances of being grouped with people you do like.

Think of it as a giant matchmaking matrix that would eventually (if the ranking element is used often enough) put pretty much everyone with like minded people.

And the best part is, you cant really grief the system, since no matter how badly YOU rank another person, the only effect it has on THEM is that the two of you just have a greatly increased chance of never seeing eachother again. One individual deliberately trying to grief rank another does not have any appreciable impact on the other persons ability to still find groups (unless you can somehow manage a coordinated effort to get the entire playerbase to group with and then poorly rank a specific individual).

I saw this mentioned briefly in another thread that I cant for the life of me remember where I saw it, but I thought that the idea has loads of potential as a player based rating system that would actually work, instead of being completely broken / open to tonnes of abuse.

Most currently proposed Player rating systems work around the idea that if you rank terrible players as terrible, or give them horrible reviews or whatever, that they eventually find themselves completely unable to get groups or whatever. These can be easily gamed however, by deliberately giving "nice" players terrible rankings in an effort to grief them.

Instead, the way it should work is sort of like a combination of the /ignore, /friend system and the LFR / LFD matchmaking system. The co-responding connections the system makes should not be bad for the ranked player, but instead be good for the player doing the ranking.

when you /ignore someone, you never see them again. The system never groups you with them again. The end.
when you /friend someone, those are the first people you generally look to for groups or interaction online.

So why not design a ranking system where it weights your possible group composition based on positive feedback you have given other players?
You group with someone. When the group is done, you rank them.
- If you rank them favourbaly, then then next time the two of you are in the Dungeon Queue system at the same time, there is an increased chance the system puts you together for a group.
- If you rank them unfavourably, the opposite occurs.

If the system was aggregate based on accounts (not characters), you would eventually NEVER be grouped with people who you didnt like, even if they try to hide behind alts, while you would have greatly increased chances of being grouped with people you do like.

Think of it as a giant matchmaking matrix that would eventually (if the ranking element is used often enough) put pretty much everyone with like minded people.

And the best part is, you cant really grief the system, since no matter how badly YOU rank another person, the only effect it has on THEM is that the two of you just have a greatly increased chance of never seeing eachother again. One individual deliberately trying to grief rank another does not have any appreciable impact on the other persons ability to still find groups (unless you can somehow manage a coordinated effort to get the entire playerbase to group with and then poorly rank a specific individual).

I'd imagine that would add a nightmarish amount of extra logic for the queue to have to go through. Now instead of just looking for the roles to fill your group based on wait time, it has to add people to groups based on wait time, factor in "friend's list"double check the people in your friend's list against class roles and wait time AND it has to also keep track of who is on your ignored list, avoid grouping two people on your ignore list even if they are the right role and top of the queue.

Overall you'd probably significantly increase wait time, bog down the system with tons of extra coding, and not really gain much because your idea is based on the the assumption that you meet the same people relatively often in LFD--when really you're just going to keep meeting new people you don't get along with, and you have the added problem of people who are say just starting heroics and not doing well on DPS or what not being ignored by everyone they group with, continously lowering their available pool of party members and extending their wait time.

A much much simpler solution is this: If you really want to exclusively group with people you like, run normal heroics instead of LFD and flex/normal/heroic raids instead of LFR.

I'd imagine that would add a nightmarish amount of extra logic for the queue to have to go through. Now instead of just looking for the roles to fill your group based on wait time, it has to add people to groups based on wait time, factor in "friend's list"double check the people in your friend's list against class roles and wait time AND it has to also keep track of who is on your ignored list, avoid grouping two people on your ignore list even if they are the right role and top of the queue.

Overall you'd probably significantly increase wait time, bog down the system with tons of extra coding, and not really gain much because your idea is based on the the assumption that you meet the same people relatively often in LFD--when really you're just going to keep meeting new people you don't get along with, and you have the added problem of people who are say just starting heroics and not doing well on DPS or what not being ignored by everyone they group with, continously lowering their available pool of party members and extending their wait time.

A much much simpler solution is this: If you really want to exclusively group with people you like, run normal heroics instead of LFD and flex/normal/heroic raids instead of LFR.

The existing Dungeon Finder system already does most of what you mentioned in your first paragraph. It already gives weight to people based on their wait time in queue (if it didnt, it wouldnt really be much of a queue). It does not check your friends list obviously, but it will check your ignore list and never group you with a character you have previously ignored. If your group is waiting for a tank, and the tank at the top of the queue is on your personal ignore list, it will not add them to your group.

There is absolutely no reason for it to add to wait times. If it sees enough people to fill the group, it fills the group. It does not wait till your 4 / 24 BFFs are on before it makes a group. It just adds a bit of stat weight to who you would rather group with. It would still group you with someone you dont like if it has to, it will just prefer not to if there are better options available.

The only reason it would ever lead to longer times in the queue would be if literally everyone waiting in queue was someone you absolutely hated, and even then, it could easily be set up to group you with them anyway (or even just the 4 of them or whatever who you disliked the least).

Also, I dont know that it would add that much more complexity coding wise to the existing matchmaking system as it is, since all you are really doing is adding an extra variable check to see if you and perspecitve group mates like each other. Hell, for largge groups, some kind of group aggregate synergy number would probably be a fairly trivial calculation to do when trying to put together a LFR raid of people who all would get along fairly well for example.

The actual computer calculations needed for it would most likely be completely insignifigant in the grand scope of computer power the WoW servers have available to them (zomg, you just added an extra .5 miliseconds to an individual's processing time in the queue!)

I suppose there is the danger of legitimate new people being downranked by elitest douchebags who dont want them in their heroic groups beacuse "lol you are doing fine dps in your dungeon greens but dont match my over inflated standards", but as it stands, chances are they probably wont want to be grouped together with said downranking douchebags anyway :P

Also, the idea is not based at all on the assumption that you meet the same people relatively often in LFR (although, from personal experience, it happens more often then you might think). It is based on the assumption that if you enjoyed playing with a particular person once, you may enjoy playing with them again. Sure, you will always be meeting people you dont know / dont get along with, but if you keep using the system to rank the ones you do like more favourably, you will eventually meet them more and more frequently.

The only assumption I really make is that quite often someone you might enjoy grouping with could be in the queue along with you, and you would never know it because the matchmaking system is currently pretty much completely random. Adding a weighting that allowed it to group you with people you want to be grouped with if they are available would just tweak that slightly.

While the idea has potential you are still left open to this working against you at times. If you join a lfr and you make one mistake that wipes the group you get punished even harder then you do now. With your system not only will they kick you but you will also be subjected to not grouping with all of those players again. Sure you might say "well that's maybe 24 people" but if you're a new player your black list will grow if you make more mistakes. Over time you might end up waiting when content comes while others are getting groups after you've improved as a player. Never put a window in front of a player in wow asking for their opinion odds are good they will click the first choice their mouse is on just to get the window off of their screen.

While the idea has potential you are still left open to this working against you at times. If you join a lfr and you make one mistake that wipes the group you get punished even harder then you do now. With your system not only will they kick you but you will also be subjected to not grouping with all of those players again. Sure you might say "well that's maybe 24 people" but if you're a new player your black list will grow if you make more mistakes. Over time you might end up waiting when content comes while others are getting groups after you've improved as a player. Never put a window in front of a player in wow asking for their opinion odds are good they will click the first choice their mouse is on just to get the window off of their screen.

While I could see that being a possibility, the likelyhood of it actually happening would probably be very low. The idea is a proposed modification of the LFD / LFR matchmaking system, not a ranking system intended for use by hard core raiders.

You would likely have to fail in a cataclysmically spectacular manner in the average LFR to get blacklisted by the entire raid. Pretty much the only people who would likely be targets for this would be tanks.

Or, if you want to group with people you know are good, you can just ask friend them and ask them to run stuff with you and avoid a bullshit ranking system that is easily abused.

That would be the optimal system obviously. Kind of sucks that the friends / ignore list have limits to them. Can you imagine trying to search a a friends list with 500 active people on it and put together a group that way?